


The Advent of Tomorrow

by whimsicalwhims



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2003-06-24
Updated: 2003-06-24
Packaged: 2017-12-08 05:51:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 860
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/757813
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whimsicalwhims/pseuds/whimsicalwhims
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Buffy visits Spike at the Hyperion.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Advent of Tomorrow

**Author's Note:**

> SPOILERS: Through Season 7 of Buffy and Season 4 of Angel. Some possible spoilers for Angel Season 5, but mostly a whole lot of speculation and fabrication on my part.  
> Disclaimer: I don't own any of these characters, places, etc. No profit is being made from this, and no infringement is intended.  
> Improv #: 1 (68), heat, splinter, whisper, change  
> Summary: Buffy visits Spike at the Hyperion.  
> Author Note: I haven't read many post "Chosen" fics yet, so I have no idea if this has been done or not.

He’s alive. 

Spike’s really alive, in the breathing, heart beating kind of way. 

For the first time since Willow passed along Fred’s e-mail message, Buffy allows herself to believe that it’s true. Because she’s holding him in her arms, and he’s real. He’s not some fabrication that her mind conjured up in an effort to make her feel better. 

He’s alive, and she can feel the heat of his body through the clothes that they both wear.

He pulls away to look at her, and she has to fight the urge to weep because the desolate look in his eyes is all too familiar. There’s always a price, and she wonders what he has had to pay to be here now. 

But the snarky little voice that resides in the back of her mind tells her that she doesn’t care. He’s here now, and that’s all that matters.

Her hand comes to rest on his cheek, her touch a bare whisper of a caress.

She tries to rectify the man she sees before her with the vampire she once knew. He’s Spike—and yet he’s not. It all starts to make her head hurt.

Perhaps sensing her confusion, he places his hand over hers, gently drawing it away. She looks down at their clasped hands, recalling the last time they had touched like this, the searing flames that had sprung forth. 

He leads her away, and she’s dimly aware that the others have long dispersed, having left them alone in the lobby.

As they walk up the stairs, she realizes that they have barely spoken to one another. Somehow this doesn’t seem to matter much. Mere words can scarcely express what she feels right now, and for some things, there are no words.

But it’s important that he understands, understands what she should have told him months ago. “I meant it,” she says as they enter his room. “I lo—“

Her words are cut off as he kisses her. Long, hot kisses that are still essentially Spike, regardless of all the other changes he has gone through.

They pull at each other’s clothes as they fall onto the bed. She moves to straddle him as she peppers kisses on the smooth skin that rests over the place where his heart now beats.

But then he pushes her off of him, and she can’t help but feel the sting of rejection from his sudden withdrawl. 

“We can’t… Things are different now,” he says with a calmness that Buffy almost envies.

“But, the night before you…” _Died. Abandoned me._ That sentenced is better left unfinished. “That night, in the basement, we—“

“It’s not that. It’s just—I don’t have anything. I might get you pregnant.”

“Oh,” her cheeks flush, and she averts her eyes from his gaze. Images of two little girls with honey colored curls and bright blue eyes flash through her head, and for a moment she’s so very tempted…

But then she shakes it off as reality sets in, and instead she scoots farther down the bed as she grasps his length in her hands and closes her mouth around him, encouraged on by his soft moans.

Then their positions are reversed, and his tongue does things that she’d thought she had only imagined it doing before. Red hot shards of pleasure course through her.

Afterwards, he rests his head on her belly. As the tremors subside from her body, she runs her fingers through his soft curls, absently noting that his hair is more blond now than white.

She asks the question that has been plaguing her mind all day. “Why didn’t you tell me you were back? You could have called or something.”

He gives a noncommittal shrug. “Just seemed better that way. I asked them not to say anything.”

The fragile foundation they’ve started to construct has begun to splinter, and she doesn’t know how to stop it before it shatters into a million un-mendable pieces.

They lay there, two warriors who have been cheated from death, each lost in their own thoughts. 

Buffy tries to ignore the pins that are pricking at her heart, tries not to be hurt by the way he’s cutting himself off. She tries to remember how she once cut herself off from those who loved her, as she finally comes to understand how it feels to be on the receiving end. 

“So what happens now?” Her voice breaches the silence. 

“We do what we’ve been doing. Me working at Wolfram and Hart. You traveling ‘round the world and finding the new Slayers.”

She will not cry. 

He shifts so that he can look into her eyes; his thumb brushes against her lips. “We do what we have to do,” and he kisses her ever so gently.

She tells herself that the tears streaming down her cheeks are not real.

*****

The first rays of sunlight spill into the room, stealing back the night. Tomorrow has come, all too soon, and it’s time for her to go.

They get dressed in silence, and he walks her to the door.

“I love you,” she says as she turns to leave.

He doesn’t answer.


End file.
